


Ashen-tree, Ashen-tree

by AirgiodSLV



Category: Simon Feximal Series - K. J. Charles
Genre: Case Fic, Found Family, M/M, Sex Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:28:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28081683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirgiodSLV/pseuds/AirgiodSLV
Summary: In December of 1900, Simon and Robert are called to investigate a suspicious death in Kent.
Relationships: Robert Caldwell/Simon Feximal
Comments: 16
Kudos: 38
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Ashen-tree, Ashen-tree

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goseaward](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goseaward/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, goseaward! Thank you for the inspiring prompts; I couldn't have asked for a better assignment.
> 
> Thank you to Linny for beta reading and constant support, and to all of the patient cheerleaders who listened to me prattle on for months about trees.
> 
> Warning: Minor body horror in the first scene, describing a corpse; can be skimmed over without missing anything too important!

December of 1900 stands out in my mind for a number of reasons. It was the last in the reign of Queen Victoria, and her passing marked the turn of the century more distinctly than I believe anything else could have. It ushered in a decade of change that led to the end of Britain’s splendid isolation, and paved the way toward that terrible war that engulfs us now.

More importantly, however, is that it was the first Christmas we spent with Sam and Jo.

Neither Simon nor I had ever expected to become parents, and were occasionally at a loss. Jo and Sam, for their part, had been making their own way for some time before our acquaintance, and were reluctant to give up their independence entirely. We had found our way through stumbling and clumsy effort, and by the time the end of the year drew close, we found ourselves something of a family.

While Miss Kay had primary charge of Jo’s education in divination, she also preferred to spend the majority of her time alone, engaged in research, and had little time for restless children. So it was that Jo accompanied us into the field whenever Simon judged it safe and appropriate, and where Jo went, Sam followed.

In the last few weeks of the year, we all found ourselves in Kent, where Simon had been summoned by a colleague to investigate a suspicious death. It was fortunate timing, as we’d only just finished a case in Dorset to do with the Cerne Abbas Giant, the ghosts of two ill-fated lovers, and a thwarted fertility ritual. I will not chronicle the details here, but suffice to say it was a very pleasant afternoon spent on a hillside, if abominably cold, and a lack of fertility on my part was no impediment to Simon’s laying the ghosts to rest in an extremely enjoyable way. I presume anyone familiar with the Giant can imagine where we were and the course of the ritual, so I will dwell no further on explanation.

It was a fortunate thing that Jo and Sam did not accompany us on that particular case. Two days later, I still carried the bruises on my wrists.

We went first to view the body, which Simon examined while the three of us waited outside the mortuary until he called for me from within.

“What do you make of this?” he asked without looking up. I had seen my share of grisly deaths by then, but even I blanched at the sight of the corpse, and was heartily in agreement with Jo’s appalled whisper of “Good Lor’,” behind me.

Simon did look up at that, his expression surprised and then mildly annoyed. although why he’d thought they wouldn’t follow me in, I’d no idea. It was what I would have done, in their place.

It was not an attractive death. The corpse was covered to the waist, but the torso, arms, and head were all visible, and all violently abused. The physical condition of the body was such that I had some difficulty in separating out all of the ailments which afflicted it, as there were signs of a dozen diseases all atop one another, and likely more internal, unseen by our eyes.

“What happened to _him_?” Jo demanded, before I could quite come up with a similar inquiry.

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Simon answered. He still looked stern and disapproving, but he didn’t order Jo and Sam out of the room, likely realizing the damage had already been done.

“What illnesses did he suffer from?” I asked, having not yet read the physician’s report.

Simon’s expression was grim. “He was in the prime of health, according to this. Right up until the moment he died. Now...”

He passed the report to me, and I skimmed the long list of ailments with growing horror. The abrupt onset of such grotesque disfigurement seemed impossible, but equally undeniable. None of these afflictions could have been hidden from the sight of those around the unfortunate man, and he would have been in agony given any one of them, let alone all together.

“There’s no common cause,” I mused aloud, reviewing the list a second time. “Nor known reason for his death.”

It was easy to speculate, given the condition of the body—for a start, the man’s ribs showed plainly, malnourished to the point of starvation. I had gone hungry to the point of illness during a darker time in my life, and had never been so gaunt. Fever-rashes inflamed his skin, along with boils and dark bruises. According to the report, all of his teeth had rotted through, every single one. Most strangely, perhaps, the man’s body was covered from head to toe with warts.

“And no sign of any of this, even a day before.” Simon frowned at the body. “His neighbors reported him in good health and spirits. He attended church the morning of the day he died. What do you make of it?”

I edged closer to Simon and the corpse, curiosity overcoming queasiness. Simon moved aside to let me peer at the irregular pattern of warts and boils on the body, and as I did…

A sharp pain sliced through my nerves. For a moment, I thought it was the vile cartouche embedded beneath the skin of my hand, for the pain seemed to come from there. As I jerked my arm back against my chest, however, I realized that the heat of injury throbbed at the tip of my index finger, and my nostrils filled with the familiar scent of libraries and newspaper offices, and the shops I frequented, their shelves laden with books. There was a weight pressing down on me as well, an immense heaviness and sense of age that bowed my spine and bent me nearly double.

Simon was there in an instant, his voice sharp when he said my name, although for a moment I could not answer him.

“I’m all right,” I gasped when I recovered myself enough to speak, finding Simon’s strong arms around me. He was in the habit of boxing at the gymnasium daily, which, besides the obvious, I appreciated for his ability to support me whenever I had these episodes, which seemed to happen more frequently each year.

“What did you see?” Simon asked, and I saw Jo staring at me just as intently, brow furrowed in concentration.

‘See’ wasn’t entirely the correct term, particularly not as Jo ‘saw’. My visions were more like an overwhelming of my senses, and often sight was the weakest impression.

“Simon,” I managed, my voice remarkably steady after the shock, “can you tell...does he have a paper cut? On this finger?” I held it up for him to see—incredibly, given the pain I’d felt, there was no sign of split skin, no bright bead of fresh blood.

Sam was faster, as Simon still had his arms beneath my elbows, and made a thorough examination of the corpse’s hand. “Don’t touch it,” Simon warned sharply, but Sam kept his own hands well clear.

“There’s a cut,” he reported, holding up his own finger and drawing the thumbnail of his other hand across it to demonstration. “Right here.”

“Poison?” Simon asked, but I shook my head. I was shaking, I realized, in the aftermath of an anguish so powerful that I could not do it justice with words. I turned my head into Simon’s chest, and he folded his arm around my own, which I held still cradled to my chest. “Out. Let’s find somewhere to sit.”

The malaise passed once we emerged into the gray winter daylight, and I took a few breaths of cleaner air before I pulled myself gingerly upright again. “I’m well now,” I assured the cluster of worried faces attending me. “It was only a shock.”

“What was it?” Simon asked, and this time I felt better prepared to answer him.

“Paper. Books. The sharp edge of a page, and…” I hesitated, not knowing how to put a name to the weight I’d felt, pressing down on my chest until I couldn’t breathe. “It felt old. Very old. Centuries. And...strange. I don’t know how to describe it.”

Simon’s frown deepened, and he looked back toward the door inside, and then at me.

“Not here,” I begged him, shuddering. “Not in that room.” I didn’t know if I could bear it, channeling the power of Simon’s ghosts and that terrible, ancient torment all at the same time.

Simon nodded. “Let’s go to the house. It’s more likely the ghost, if there is one, will be there.”

  


On arriving at the boarding house where our corpse, Mr Addison Marleigh, had been a resident, we were told that his belongings had already been packed away.

“On a suspicious death?” I objected, disbelieving.

The building’s owner frowned at us. “Wasn’t murder, was it? Died of natural causes.”

“Yes,” said Simon, in a tone that ended that line of inquiry. After I explained that we were there at the request of the family, we were given a key, and made our way up the creaking stairs to the late Mr Marleigh’s rooms.

For a moment, we merely stood and gazed in dismay at the task before us. Mr Marleigh had apparently been a collector of books and antiquities, and the assortment that had once, presumably, filled the bookshelves that lined the modest room now haphazardly filled crates that were stacked one atop the other in all corners.

“Sam ‘n’ me’ll take those’uns,” Jo announced, breaking the standstill. “C’mon, Sam.” So saying, they marched over to a pile of crates and lifted the first down onto the ground, where they began to go through it with Sam.

“What are we looking for, exactly?” I asked Simon. I was no green amateur by this period of our collaboration, but it seemed we had very little to go on.

“You said books and paper,” Simon answered. “Something Mr Marleigh shouldn’t have had in his possession, is my guess.”

By this I knew he meant volumes of arcane and dangerous knowledge, of which the majority in England are kept locked away in the library at the Remnant Club, the gathering place for ghost-hunters, diviners, and occultists in London. Simon and I were both members; he by trade, and myself by association.

“Failing that,” Simon continued, “a volume with blood on one of the pages.”

It was a monotonous task, although I found myself cataloguing Mr Marleigh’s interests by the volumes we sorted out into stacks on the floor. He’d had a keen interest in birds, both native and foreign, and at least a passing fancy for geology, naval history, clockworks, and archaeology.

“Could it be something in one of the archaeological texts?” I asked, recalling a case that Simon and I had worked only a year previous, which had involved Egyptian curses, cultists, and a pair of curious Americans.

“We can separate them out,” Simon answered. “We won’t have time to read them all here.”

His point was well-taken; already we were beginning to lose the light, and I had no desire to stay in this cold, hollowed-out shell of a room after dark.

Sam and Jo began to gather the archaeology books into a pile at the center of the room, with Simon and I sorting them out from the others. We’d worked through roughly half the crates when there was a sharp intake of breath from Jo, who stumbled backward a step and pointed.

Simon was across the room swiftly, inspecting the volume Jo had indicated. It looked innocuous enough, but Jo’s shaky voice was certain when they said, “That’s the one there.”

“Robert,” Simon said, and I joined in the huddle around the pile of books.

It appeared innocuous enough, but even as I reached out for it, I could feel the same suffering as before, a twisting, malignant agony that speared through me to my core, all the way to my roots.

“Good Lord,” I gasped when I returned to myself, Simon as before with a hand at my elbow. “Yes. That’s it. Whatever ‘it’ is, which I’m sure I couldn’t tell you.”

“Let’s find out, shall we?” Simon was already searching out a mirror among the crates of belongings, though he paused to cast a swift, searching glance at me. “May I?”

“Yes of course, you needn’t ask,” I assured him. There was, as ever, a slight drop in my stomach at the impending need for Simon to ground his power through me, though I was never unwilling. It was unpleasant at best, and exhausting and painful at worst, and I wasn’t fond of the way it left me unsteady afterward. More than that, I disliked the tight mask that came over Simon’s face when he knew I was in pain, and that his power was the cause.

“Sam, Jo, would you wait outside for a moment?” Simon’s tone was mild, but calm with authority.

Jo tried at once to protest. “We’re s’posed to be learnin’ how to do what you do.”

“Another time. It’s inappropriate,” Simon declared, and this time they left without complaint, beyond a few grumbles muttered under their breath, which Simon pretended not to hear.

Simon had found a mirror, an ornate thing which must have hung on the wall above the washbasin. He propped it up against a stack of crates, and I took my place just before it, kneeling on the wooden floor.

“I’m going to be too old for this eventually,” I joked as I lowered myself down. “You’ll have to lift me back up again in another few years.”

It was only half-jest; I had aged tremendously since the procedure that had embedded the dreadful cartouche in my hand, after more than a year of channeling Simon’s ghosts. My body felt older than my years, and I ached even more in cold weather.

Simon had his torso bared to the mirror, and I watched the black and red lines that crawled across his skin, incomprehensible to the eye—unless one looked in a mirror. He placed his hand upon my shoulder, and I braced myself for the piercing cold that cut through to my very soul.

“Will you need the book?” I managed, my breath already half-stolen from me, but even as I asked, the lines on Simon’s muscular chest and stomach began to wriggle wildly, forming patterns I found still beyond my understanding.

The scars Simon bore, in the presence of myself, a mirror, and a willing spirit, would rearrange themselves into words, spelling out some hint as to the ghost’s desires or demise. Often it was a secret of great import, one they wished to pass on to Simon before he could lay them to rest.

We had encountered deviance from this pattern in the past—words so old that Simon could not read them, or foreign tongues neither of us could comprehend. This was neither of those, nor was it the frustrated scribbling of a ghost mad or insensible to us. Instead, the lines simply flowed across Simon’s skin, coming together and splitting apart, branching out to splinter across his ribs.

Simon’s grip had tightened hard on my shoulder—as difficult as this experience was for me, it was hardly easier for him. His jaw clenched, and he stared fixedly at the lines as if willing them to form letters through determination alone, until I finally cried out, “Enough, Simon, enough,” and the freezing, jagged knife in my chest slowly withdrew, leaving me to sag onto my heels on the bare floor.

Simon was solicitous of my comfort, and we left presently with the book that was somehow linked to the late Mr Marleigh’s death, returning to 166 Fetter Lane for a hearty supper and - in my case and Simon’s - a stiff drink.

“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” I admitted when we sat alone together before the fire, nursing a snifter of brandy each before retiring to bed.

“Nor I,” Simon confirmed. He’d looked grim since the boarding house, and I knew it was because he fretted over my well-being, and because he knew no more than I did about how to proceed next. We had a book, an unremarkable volume on the trees of Britain and Ireland published some fifty years past, and the corpse of a man who’d died horribly in the throes of a dozen ailments, and who had been in good health that very morning. It was not much to go on, nor were my flashes of insight especially useful.

“We’ll go to the club tomorrow,” Simon decided, and I nodded my agreement. Someone at the Remnant Club, particularly someone whose charge was the library, might be able to shed some light on our mystery.

In the meantime…

“You know,” I suggested, clearing my throat and turning the glass in my hand so that the liquid within caught the firelight. “I’m afraid I’m rather chilled still, after the ordeal at the boarding house. And with the body. It’s quite cold tonight.”

Simon’s look of concern changed gradually to amusement as he caught sight of my raised eyebrow. “Even with the brandy? And the hearth?”

“Even so,” I said firmly. “I fear stronger measures must be taken. I shouldn’t think even goosedown blankets would be enough.”

“Shall I have Cornelia bring in a warming pan?” Simon asked, in a tone of perfect courtesy.

“I had something else in mind,” I told him, and tossed back the last of my brandy to the sight of Simon’s rare half-smile.

  


We arrived at the Remnant Club just past noon and made our way to the small office reserved solely for the Hesselian Society of Occult Investigation, which maintained the library. Phillippa Montgomery was installed within, a cup of tea on her desk and an open book under her nose.

She brightened when she saw us. In defiance of the reclusive stereotype common to librarians, Miss Montgomery was exuberant, inquisitive, and forthright. She insisted on being called Pippa by friends, and had her nose in everyone’s business.

“I read the new story about you, Mr Feximal,” she said happily, marking her place carefully with a ribbon before closing the book on her desk. It was a text on the long sword dance, which was appropriate to the season and, I was relieved to note, unlikely to hint at any catastrophes which might be looming. I never felt entirely easy when Miss Montgomery’s reading material mirrored some of the sensationalist stories in the news; it suggested she was looking into something for the ghost-hunters which we all preferred to remain fiction.

Simon made some sound of acknowledgement, no doubt assuming he’d also read it, as he did whenever I published. For my own part, I was perplexed about which story Miss Montgomery meant, as I hadn’t sent anything to my publisher in a month.

“Not like your usual, Mr Caldwell, but clear enough it was about Mr Feximal. Are you stepping out on _The Strand_?”

I was certainly not, and expressed as much to Miss Montgomery. “Pardon, but which story is it you mean? Not the Goodwin Sands haunting? The ghost ship?” It was the most recent to see print, although some weeks out of date.

“No, the Horns,” replied Miss Montgomery, which turned my confusion to mild alarm. Simon and I _had_ once pursued a case in Highgate to do with the public house custom of Swearing on the Horns and the mischievous ghost of a patron, but I hadn’t penned the tale of it in my chronicles.

“I’m sorry to be brusque, but we’re here about a book.” Simon was never truly sorry to be brusque, but he was always courteous, even when impatient with others’ conversation.

“No, Simon, wait.” I held up a hand. “Miss Montgomery, you wouldn’t happen to have a copy of this story? Might I borrow it?”

She looked surprised, but recovered quickly. “Of course. It’s just here, came in with this morning’s papers.”

The publication turned out to be _The Daily Express_ , a new sort of paper which printed its headlines directly onto the front page. While I searched through it for the story, Miss Montgomery helpfully trying to point it out, Simon returned to the subject of our visit.

“We believe this book might be connected with a haunting.” Simon presented the cloth-wrapped bundle with care, setting it onto the desk to undo the twine that bound it. “Could you tell us if it’s familiar to you, or to the library, and if there’s anything unusual about it?”

Miss Montgomery was now frowning between Simon and me, clearly sensing greater mysteries on both fronts and torn between which to pursue. The book won out, and she sat down again at her desk, opening the front cover to the title page and frontispiece with gloved hands.

I, meanwhile, was skimming the story with growing horror. Miss Montgomery had been correct—it clearly was the case Simon and I had investigated several years past, but told as detective fiction, without any hint of ghosts or the supernatural. Simon’s name - and mine, for I featured in it as well, I gathered - had been changed, as had many of the other details, but there could be no doubt of the origin.

“What the devil? I beg your pardon, Miss Montgomery,” I said hastily, having spoken without thought or reservation.

“It’s not yours then?” she asked curiously, looking up from the arboreal index. “I wondered. It doesn’t have your usual flair.”

“The book, please,” Simon reminded her, though to his credit, he did now pay attention to my distress. “What is it? Someone’s followed in your footsteps?”

“I’d heard the story, that’s why I knew it was you,” Miss Montgomery put in, this time without looking away from the pages before her. “Just recently, too. Thursday?”

Ah. The pieces fell into place; I, too, had heard similar stories on Thursdays. They were known as ‘Storytelling Thursdays’ now with Thomas Carnacki, and while Simon wasn’t a regular feature, he’d collaborated enough with Carnacki to make frequent appearances. I’d missed this one, but that didn’t surprise me—he’d have been able to spin the tale more freely without Simon interrupting to correct Carnacki’s sensationalist ornamentation.

“But surely he wouldn’t have sent it in to the press,” I protested. Carnacki could be a windbag, but he was a capable ghost-hunter, and guarded those secrets which needed to be kept.

“This bit is interesting,” said Miss Montgomery, recalling Simon’s and my own attention to her at once. “We’re used to seeing paper of this type now, but when this book was made, it would have been brand-new. See how it’s bleached? It’s not just cloth fibers, either. This must have been an early printing from wood fibers.”

“Good God,” I said at once, remembering my visions. “Wood and paper.”

“A book of trees, made of trees...we still don’t know what’s haunting it,” Simon said with a frown. I knew that he was unhappy still with the results of his attempt at divination the previous evening, which had taxed my strength and provided no answers. It made him short-tempered and protective of me, and I had little way of soothing him.

“Haunting it,” exclaimed Miss Montgomery, who pushed the book away from her reflexively but did not, I noticed, let go of it. “Do you mean there’s a ghost in the pages?”

“Or something like it,” Simon agreed grimly. “I wouldn’t touch it with your bare hands. Is there anything else you can tell us?”

Miss Montgomery related that the printing press was established in Kent, which was, she added, where the first commercially-successful printing press had set up shop some three hundred years previous.

“Back to Kent,” I suggested, making it half a question, and Simon nodded.

“We can visit the publishing house. We’ve little enough else to go on for today.”

“May I…?” I inquired of Miss Montgomery, holding up the paper.

“Yes, be my guest, I’ve read it through. Only bring it back when you’re done. I’d like to keep that one.” She smiled at Simon, then conspiratorially at me. “It’s quite something, isn’t it, being close to such a famous detective.”

Simon frowned, and I made a note to read the story with greater attention at the earliest possible convenience.

  


While Simon looked in the library at the Remnant Club for clues, I headed to the Stratton Club, that haven for scribblers in London, to see what I could learn about publishing houses in Kent. I stopped on the way there to read through ‘The Case of the Ram’s Horns’, as it was titled, and was very glad that I had, for Miss Montgomery was not the only one to make the connection between the Great Detective in the story and Simon Feximal.

“Robert, read about you this morning! Who’s got a line on your stories? They’ve stolen a march on you this time, haven’t they? Was this really a case?”

Darcy Hallewell had come up in the world of journalism around the same time I had, but hadn’t experienced my abrupt blacklisting and subsequent fall from grace. He was due to make editor of something in a few years’ time, if anyone had the sense to woo him away from freelancing.

“No idea,” I told him honestly. “I’ve only just read it.”

It was difficult to convey the full range of my emotions on reading the piece. It was well-written, with just the right mix of excitement and gravity, and the turns of phrase were crafted with impressive skill. Nor could I find fault with the depiction of Simon, which, while it lacked the warmth and sensitivity I knew him to be capable of, was an honest portrayal of the face he showed the world.

The writer clearly idolized him, and therein lay the problem, or rather one of several. A master sleuth in such a story needed a foil, and had found a suitable candidate in me. In our daily life, I assisted Simon on cases by thinking through all the evidence and sharing any clues brought on by the fickle gift of my supernatural awareness, which had been bestowed on me by an ancestor during the case that had introduced me to Simon. I also channeled the spirits which communicated through the palimpsest of his skin, although that was not something anyone knew outside of our household and a few trusted associates.

In ‘The Case of the Ram’s Horns’, I had no such role. I parroted information already known to the reader, prompted the detective to explain himself by confessing mystification at every turn, and marveled aloud at his genius. I was the everyman, a mouthpiece for the reader, their window into the world of this masterful investigator. As a writer myself, I understood the narrative device. As a man, I found it a difficult tonic to swallow.

Darcy whistled. “Didn’t even tell you? That’s a coward’s move. Have you talked to Henry?”

“Not yet.” It was a sensible point. My editor Henry Scott would need to be reassured I was not working for another paper in breach of my contract with _The Strand_ , although now having read the story, I doubted he would believe it was mine.

There was another concern which I could not share with Darcy, and that was the accuracy of the story, which made it likely that the author had been present to hear it from Carnacki—which, in turn, meant that it was someone at the Remnant Club. While there were certainly members I didn’t know well, and others I didn’t care to, it was somehow a greater betrayal that one of our own small society of occultists had portrayed me in this unflattering light.

“Not as good as yours anyway,” Darcy assured me now. “None of the ghost bits.”

Which was the other matter weighing on my mind. Whomever had penned this tale, they had edited out any hint of the supernatural so thoroughly that I would never have known it to be a haunting case, had I not been present for the chronicled events. An attempt to cover their tracks and conceal their identity? Or a precaution against any of the secrets we kept among us at the Remnant Club coming to light?

I thanked Darcy for his sympathy and support, and pressed him for information about the publisher of our mysterious book. Someone knew someone who knew someone else, which finally led me through the gossip circles to the lead publisher for _An Illustrated Guide to the Trees of Britain and Ireland_.

I left in low spirits, having been consoled now a half-dozen times over the matter of the new author, with my imagination supplying future dangers I didn’t care to contemplate. The tale of swearing on the horns might have come from Carnacki, but what if the author now, as seemed highly likely, had a taste for it and wished to write another? Would Simon’s and my cases be unearthed, examined, and mined for the framework of a detective story?

The problem I foresaw was that in seeking out the stories I myself had not already chronicled and published, this new author might focus on the ones I had _not_ , and there were good reasons for each of my omissions. Should Simon be implicated in the death of a butterfly hunter, or the odious Dr. Berry? Should our initial meeting come under closer scrutiny? Should, heaven forfend, the details of cases such as the Cerne Abbas Giant come to light, and sentence both Simon and I to hard labor?

Simon was not yet at home when I returned, and I settled in the study to have a drink and, I confess it, to brood. Jo found me there some little time later, likely having heard my arrival, and seemed to guess - or to know, as is sometimes the case with a gifted seer - what troubled me, for they took the paper from the table next to me, and began to read.

“’S not like you at all,” Jo objected when they’d finished, and I was warmed in spite of my melancholy by the indignation in their voice.

I felt compelled by honesty to say, “It isn’t far off. It’s Simon who does the work; he _is_ the great ghost-hunter and detective. I’m merely his companion.”

“Poppycock,” said Jo. “He’d say it was, too. What about your sense of things? How you know things, like about the book?”

“That’s a...bestowed gift,” I said carefully, for I had not shared with Jo, nor did I intend to, the circumstances of haunting and passion which had led to my unique intuition. “Which I have as a result of Simon’s work, not my own. I serve as a tool only. Simon is the one who makes sense of any impressions I may have, and follows the clues to their conclusion.”

“Is not,” Jo said stoutly. Seeing no change in my expression, for I did truly believe that Simon was the greater of us, they fell silent for a moment. Then Jo said, unexpectedly, “Would you say Aunt Theodosia’s responsible for my being a seer?”

I frowned, thrown off by the unexpected question. “Of course not. Your gift is your own.”

“But it’s her who’s training me,” Jo argued. “Her who helps guide me to the end of the visions. That’s what you’re saying, innit? You won’t take credit because it’s Uncle Simon who did the ghost-hunting first.”

I opened my mouth to object, and then closed it again. Jo gazed back at me, determined and triumphant. I gave them a little nod, as Simon often did when acknowledging a point, and the first hint of a smile as my spirits lifted somewhat. “You’re right, of course. Thank you, Jo.”

Jo jumped up from the chair to take their leave. “Anyway, it’s not Uncle Simon as gave you that gift. If you want to give credit away, blame him as was in that painting.”

With that they took their leave, leaving me scarlet-faced in the study, wondering not for the first time exactly how much of our lives Jo could see.

  


“I’d thought there might be some code in it, but if so, it’s nothing I could make sense of.” Simon was filling me in on his research in the library on our way to Kent, which didn’t seem to have been fruitful. His heavy brows were knit, and I took an idle moment to admire his profile, the beaky Roman nose and stubborn chin which gave his appearance an intimidating cast.

“The publisher might be of more help,” I offered. “The author, I’m afraid, is long dead. Natural causes, before you ask. I asked around at the club.”

Simon grunted acknowledgement, still lost in thought. “There was one line about the Elder tree having ‘magical’ properties, but it was in reference to folklore. I’ve never heard of a tree having powers, independent of a person’s spirit.”

“What, like a dryad?” I asked, startled.

Simon shook his head. “I was thinking of the Green Men, and the oak, holly, and ivy.”

The way he said it snagged on my attention, and I glanced at him again. “Green Men?”

He grimaced. “Arcanists. There are plenty of them who maintain membership with the Remnant Club, but they don’t associate with the likes of ghost-hunters.” Before I could voice my opinion of that, Simon said abruptly, “I heard from several people at the club that they think there’s another writer stealing stories from Carnacki. They didn’t see any harm in what was published, but believed that might not be the case a second time.”

“I’ve read it through. It’s our story, but there are no ghosts in it at all. Nor anything too personal,” I added, guessing his concern, which ran parallel to my own. “I don’t believe it’s anyone who knows us well. Whomever it is, they idolize you.”

Simon grunted again, which was his usual response to compliments, and then turned an unexpectedly penetrating look on me. His steely eyes matched the winter’s day, gray and clear, and the intensity of his attention weakened my knees. “I heard they were not so kind to you.”

I hadn’t expected that. Simon cared deeply for me, but he tended toward absorption in his work, sparing little time for things he considered frivolous. I wondered what had been said at the club for Simon to have taken note.

“It’s nothing,” I assured him. “No harm was meant, I’m sure.”

He stared at me a moment more, then directed his attention ahead again, seeking out the address of the publishing house. I felt mixed relief and disappointment, but in truth, I wasn’t ready to discuss it. I wasn’t really certain that Simon would understand, even if he read the story in question. Simon had always seen me as he believed I was, and that view could never be coloured by another’s opinion, even my own.

In the publisher’s office, Simon made inquiries regarding the book, its author, its content, and any unusual circumstances surrounding its printing. I listened at first, but as time passed, I found my attention wandering. The small office was filled with books, and I drifted into a reverie, hearing the rustle of pages like the flutter of leaves in a breeze.

“Robert,” Simon’s voice recalled me, and by his tone, it wasn’t the first time. When I blinked back to myself, he was watching me intently. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” I said honestly. “I was only listening to the leaves.”

Simon’s brow furrowed, and then he turned back to the publisher, a very small, mild-spoken man in a brown wool suit by the name of Graham Barker. “Where do you purchase your paper?” Almost at once, he amended, “Where did you buy _this_ paper?” He held up the book, which was tightly closed in his hand, but I could have sworn that again, I heard rustling leaves.

“It’s one of the earliest,” answered Mr Barker, not in a tone of revelation, which I suspected meant that he and Simon had discussed this already. “I’d expect it came from Dartford. The old paper mill.”

I could see it in my mind then, industry fed by fibers of wood and cloth, the pristine pages bleached bone-white as death. “The Darent and the Cray,” I said aloud, and in the next moment I’d no idea why I’d spoken. I’d named the rivers that formed the original Dartford Crossing, but I couldn’t have said where the paper mill stood, there or elsewhere.

Simon was staring intently at me again. “Thank you,” he told Mr Barker, and we took our leave, presumably off to Dartford. When we reached the town, Simon looked around for street signs, but I needed no such guidance; my feet seemed to know the way, and I strode off in what I felt certain was the right direction, leaving Simon to curse quietly and catch up to me in a few powerful strides.

I’d thought I was leading us to the paper mill, but when the pressure guiding me onward eased, we stood near the crux of the rivers, gazing at a bare patch of earth. Nothing grew there, in spite of close proximity to the water—not grass, nor saplings, nor the few winter flowers that dotted the landscape around us.

“Well,” said Simon, and then again: “Well.”

My attention had been so fixed that I didn’t notice the young woman until she’d turned, assessed us, and strode over. We were clearly her target, but I felt sure I’d have recognized her if we’d met before—she had strong features, a determined manner, and an aristocratic air that made me feel properly shabby by comparison. She was also young, hardly into womanhood, although her forthright gaze suggested that she refused to find either age or sex any impediment.

“I see you’ve found it. Simon Feximal, I presume?” She didn’t wait for confirmation before continuing on. “Are you capable of managing? I have my hands full at the moment, and will be glad to leave this one to you.”

“I beg your pardon,” I interjected politely. “Managing what, precisely?”

She looked at me, briefly, then at the book Simon still carried, and her gaze sharpened. “Ah,” she said, and then nodded briskly. “Yes, I believe that will do. Leave a message at the Remnant Club if you run into any complications.”

Simon made no reply, but the young woman didn’t wait for one; she strode off with her parasol propped on her shoulder, pulling on a pair of gloves which I was startled to see she must have removed, out of doors and in public.

“Simon,” I said, staring after the bobbing parasol. “Who was that?”

“That,” Simon replied flatly, “was a Glyde.”

I would have inquired further, but Simon was gazing again at the patch of bare earth, which prompted another question entirely. “Is there a ghost?”

Simon didn’t answer at first. Then he said reluctantly, “I don’t know,” and looked around, back toward the town. “I think it’s time we spoke with someone about what once stood on this spot.”

  


The paper mill yielded no new leads, much to our disappointment. I experienced no disorienting flashes of insight, and while Simon took advantage of a private room to call on his powers again, our hope for a different result was in vain. Simon’s skin was witness only to fractured lines twisting around his trunk, which left me fatigued and Simon his now-habitual mix of guilty and protective.

We stopped by a public house for a late luncheon at my urging, it being an appropriate hour to do so, for like any journalist I knew the value of local gossip and information. After our order had been taken, Simon introduced both of us to the proprietor, which led almost at once to the appearance of a woman I presumed to be the cook, for she bustled out from a back room wearing an apron and with her face nearly as red as her frazzled hair, likely from the hot oven.

“Simon Feximal,” she repeated, half-question and half-exclamation, twisting her hands in her apron. “I’ve read all about you in _The Strand_. And Robert Caldwell, is it? I thought someone might come, one day, but I’d never thought it would be you.”

This entirely captured our attention, and Simon grew focused, his gaze keen. “Madam, are you saying you know what’s brought us here today?”

“To be sure I do,” the woman confirmed, nodding. “My family’s worked farms around here for generations. I would’ve followed, if I hadn’t married Nick.”

I glanced at Simon, but he was still intent on investigation. “Can you tell us what you know?”

“I can do better,” she announced, and left us with a swirl of skirts, hurrying through another door that led into the yard behind the building. The cold blew in along with her, and I gave an involuntary shiver.

“He don’t do no harm,” the man Nick said, looking reluctant. “Likes a bit of mischief is all, especially ’round this time of year. You won’t hurt him or nothing?”

It was a question we couldn’t yet answer. If Simon could lay the ghost to rest peacefully, he would, but an unquiet spirit who’d murdered at least one person already might not go so easily. I bit my tongue on explaining the harm that had certainly been done already, and asked, “You knew the man?”

“We all did. Kept a hand in all over the town, helping out with folk who needed it. Worked farmland for harvest and planting, and did odd jobs the rest of the year. James Keighley. Died in an accident when a barn caught fire, trying to save the horses.”

“Did he,” I asked carefully, “have any sort of affinity for trees?”

“Trees?” Nick’s face screwed up in confusion. “Not that I know of, not besides crops.”

“Does this book mean anything to you?” Simon asked, drawing it out of his coat pocket to show the cover. “One of his possessions, perhaps?”

Nick shook his head. “Not to me. You can ask Judith when she comes back. She won’t be long. We keep the hooden horse locked away in the back now, since James has taken to haunting it. Seems a shame, but we couldn’t take him ’round the town, someone might be frightened.”

“No, indeed,” I agreed automatically, baffled, at the same time Simon asked, “Hooden horse?”

“Aye, for the hoodening. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

We all stared at one another for a moment, and then Judith came bursting back in with a wooden pole clasped in one hand, on top of which was fashioned a cloth horse’s head. She had an armful of sackcloth in her other hand, and set the butt of the pole down triumphantly on the flagstones before us.

“Here he is,” she declared. “We’ve been keeping him company, best we can, but you’ll do better for him.”

I glanced at Simon, whose expression was studiously neutral. “We came here to investigate the matter of a book, which we believe might relate to the patch of bare earth by the riverbank. Do you know of it?”

I could tell they did, for their expressions changed. “You mean where the old aching tree stood,” Judith replied. “Cut down half a century ago and the stump rotted away, but nothing will grow there now.”

As soon as she said it, I could picture the tree in my mind—bent-backed and heavy-limbed, gnarled branches twisting around a thick trunk.

“The aching tree,” Simon repeated, and Nick nodded.

“Stood for generations. Cut down to feed the old paper mill, my gran told me, back when the mill was new. Not as many folk called on it then as used to, and they thought it ought to come down, but naught will grow in to replace it.”

“It was an ash,” Judith added. “I remember that, because the charm went, ‘Ashen-tree, ashen-tree, pray buy these warts from me.’ That was to spell off warts. You rubbed a bit of bacon over them, and then you tucked the bacon behind some of the bark.”

“No, that wasn’t it.” Nick shook his head. “You pricked the wart, gran said, and pushed the pin into the tree.”

“That’s for toothache,” Judith insisted. “Drive a nail into the tooth until there’s blood, and then pound the bloody nail into the tree.”

“My God,” I said quietly. Simon said nothing at first, but then invited them to sit with us, to tell us all the tales they could remember.

There were many—some local, others brought in from Cambridgeshire and Sussex, although neither Judith nor Nick knew much beyond where they’d heard the tales. Most came from grandparents or great-grandparents, passed down in folklore. How to make a circle and walk it to transfer your sickness to a healthy tree at the center. Curing a hernia by passing through a split ash sapling to leave the pain behind, and binding up the sapling with strong twine to trap it there so the tree could heal it. Even plague could be driven off with the right charm.

The right charm, and the right tree.

I couldn’t truly imagine it. The weight of a town’s suffering for generations, all gathered and transferred into a single tree. Those aches and pains that made up humanity, all cast into a living vessel, which was held together with nails and twine and magic to bear them all.

And then a new method was found for making paper, far cheaper than using cloth, and the tree had been cut down, all its suffering soaked and shredded into pages. Until a moment had come when some part of it had pierced the skin and touched the blood of a living person again, and all its demons had been released at once.

“We have to help it,” I said once I’d found my voice. “We must.”

Simon looked grim and determined. “We shall.” He stood up, and I with him, though my legs felt unsteady with shock.

Judith and Nick looked at us in some confusion, and then Judith indicated the hobbyhorse which leaned against a neighboring table. “But you will see James to rest, won’t you?”

We assured her that we would, and left the public house in the company of two ghosts, neither of which I was certain we could help.

“That poor tree,” I said as soon as we were out, my heart aching in my throat.

“It might not be the tree itself,” Simon warned. “It might be the ghosts of everyone who left a piece of themselves in it, in which case I’ve even less an idea of how to help them. We should go back to the site.”

“What about that?” I indicated the hobbyhorse, the pole wrapped up in its accompanying bundle of sackcloth.

“One ghost at a time,” Simon answered, so we returned to the patch of bare earth.

“To think,” I murmured. “What a tree must have once grown here, to have withstood such pain.”

Simon looked at the spot, then removed his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves. “Would you go and borrow a shovel?”

“You think some part of it is still down there?” I asked, horrified at the notion. A root, perhaps, trapped in the cold ground for decades, growing more bitter and malevolent with each passing season and poisoning the soil against all else that might have grown over it.

“I think it has borne the pain of humanity long enough, and whether it’s the spirit of a tree or a hundred men and women, it deserves to be laid to rest. A shovel please, Robert. This may take some time.”

The earth was hard and half-frozen, and the digging went slowly as a result, but Simon was thick-set with the muscles of a pugilist, and over the course of an hour we’d managed to dig a respectable pit, with Simon breaking up the earth and me hauling out with my bare hands any larger rocks that impeded his progress.

I’d thought we might attract attention, and there were some stares, but no one came over to join us as we stood on either side of the grave and held a brief, quiet funeral. Simon knelt to place the book inside the pit, and we waited a moment in respectful silence. Then Simon looked to me, and I searched for words which might be suitable for this strange and somber occasion.

“May you be without pain from this time on,” I said at last, and Simon nodded his approval, and bent to pick up the shovel. We buried _An Illustrated Guide to the Trees of Britain and Ireland_ as a light snow began to fall, and after Simon had tamped down the mound of earth and stepped back, I heard a shuddering sigh go through the leaves of the trees around us.

Simon met my inquiring look with a nod, and I saw his shoulders relax a fraction. He shrugged back into his coat and looked at the hobbyhorse. “Now for this fellow,” he said, and we set out for home.

  


“Are you certain you’re up for it?” Simon asked in the privacy of our bedroom. I was already taking my place before the mirror, kneeling so I didn’t block the view of Simon’s torso.

Normally I would dismiss this as Simon’s usual concern, but he had cause today, as I’d already channeled once with no result, and we’d spent the afternoon digging a half-frozen grave. I was thoroughly fatigued, and in truth the idea of the cartouche in my hand piercing me with cold agony for a second time today wasn’t one I relished.

Nevertheless, we had a ghost in need of aid, and if this one truly wasn’t malicious, it was even more deserving of our help. Once Simon knew what business kept it lingering here, we could finish it and Simon could lay the spirit to rest.

“I can manage,” I assured him, and reached up to take his hand, setting it on my shoulder and squeezing. He held my eyes for a moment, then nodded and looked up at his own reflection in the mirror.

I felt the aching chill as Simon’s power coursed through me, grounded by the lightning rod of metal beneath my skin. This time, we achieved the desired result almost at once, and the black and red lines re-aligned themselves across Simon’s chest and stomach.

It was nonsense at first, at least to me—I caught words here and there, mentions of people and work to be done, unfinished jobs and concern for the horses in the barn—but eventually the agitated letters scrawling themselves into view in the mirror shifted to form a single message.

 _One last ride_.

“The horses he freed?” I asked, my voice tight and breathless with pain, though I did my best to hide it for Simon’s sake. “Is there a particular farm…?”

Simon looked thoughtful, and his gaze drifted to the hobbyhorse propped up against the wall nearby. “No,” he answered at last. “I believe we’re going hoodening.”

I knew little about the tradition, and said as much; Simon nodded without surprise.

“It’s only done in Kent, so far as I know, though it’s similar to other wassailing traditions. The Mari Lwyd, for instance, or the Broad. Fortunately for us all, Mr Keighley included, it’s nearly Christmas Eve.”

Simon reached down to help me back onto my feet, and began to button up his shirt over the lines of ink, which were once more incomprehensible.

“If you would oblige me, Robert, by looking into the details, I shall do the same. I think we can grant Mr Keighley his last request without too much trouble. It will be a fitting time for it, at Christmas.” He looked at me from hooded eyes, which showed an unaccustomed hint of uncertainty. “Will it spoil the night for Sam and Jo, if we spend it with a ghost?”

I knew then that Simon was as worried as I about making this Christmas a good one for Sam and Jo, who we’d taken in and who likely hadn’t spent Christmas with anything like a family in quite some time. They’d had each other, of course, but I was keenly aware of my position as an honorary uncle, and the responsibility of creating a warm and happy Christmas, with no trace of the shadows they must have seen in past years.

“We shall make it a night to remember,” I assured Simon firmly. A new thought surfaced, and I asked, “Do you think it will be dangerous at all? Nick and Judith said the ghost was a friendly one, just restless and mischievous.”

Simon frowned. “There’s always a chance, but in this case, I think the risk is small enough. Why do you ask?”

“I was just thinking,” I explained, a smile slowly creeping out over my expression, “we might make this a family affair.”

Simon’s expression was approving, but it clouded in the next moment, his brows drawing together over his gray eyes.

“Robert.” Simon reached out to touch my wrist, near the place where the cartouche was embedded in my hand. “About this story. The one in the paper.”

It was not a turn I’d expected the conversation to take, and I blinked at him in some confusion, my thoughts redirected. “What about it?”

“I hope you know…” Simon had never been one for speeches or sentimentality; he was awkward now, trying to express feelings which he rarely put into words. “However others might view us, I have only ever seen you as a partner and an equal. You have been invaluable to my investigations, and I see them now as ours. I wouldn’t willingly do without you, now that I’ve had the privilege of working alongside you.”

For Simon, that was more than a declaration—it was practically a poetic ode, and I found myself speechless as a result. I’d known how he felt, of course - how could I not, after all we’d been through together? - but hearing it expressed in his straightforward way brought me a joy that was altogether unexpected, and which I would cherish long after the precise words had faded in my mind.

“I have never doubted it,” I told him at last, turning my arm to clasp his hand in mine.

Simon cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable now with his display of emotion, and looked away. “Shall we see what we can turn up about hoodening? Perhaps at the club?”

“I think we’ve done enough for one day,” I answered evenly, and didn’t let go of his hand when he shifted as though to move away. “It will wait until morning.”

Simon nodded once without meeting my gaze, and I guessed that after making himself vulnerable on my behalf, he wasn’t certain of how to recover. I had ideas on that score, but they would need to wait until after dinner, when we retired to bed. The Fetter Lane household could not be under any illusions as to the nature of our relationship, but we still took care to preserve appearances, and both of us missing dinner was a step too far.

“Cornelia’s preparing a cobweb party,” I said after a moment, hoping to distract Simon back to his usual self. “I heard Miss Kay complaining about the mess it would leave.”

“For Jo and Sam? That will be good. You’ve already wrapped the gifts?” He was talking now just to talk, which was still unlike him, but he’d recovered his usual manner.

“I have. Simon.” I changed the subject again, my tone teasing. “We shouldn’t miss dinner if you only kiss me.”

He cleared his throat, looking away again, and my heart swelled in my chest. “If I began kissing you,” he said gruffly, “I shouldn’t be certain I could stop.”

His hand was still in mine; I drew him in closer, and he came reluctantly until he caught sight of my smile. “I’m willing to take the risk,” I promised him, and made good on my word.

  


Christmas Eve was cold but clear, with no sign of the miserable, chilly drizzle that frequently marked the end of the year in London. We set out in the evening just after dinner, visiting houses of our acquaintance, for after some conference we feared that we’d be turned away from most places around Fetter Lane, or have the doors remain barred.

To those of our acquaintance who knew nothing of spirits, we explained it as a special holiday treat for Sam and Jo, and were met largely with understanding and a promise to play along. Those who knew better were told of the ghost who would be accompanying us, and the appropriate precautions taken to make each home as safe for the residents and welcoming for the spirit as was reasonable.

Having researched the hoodening tradition to the extent we could, the four of us divided the roles between us. As I’d imagined they would be, Jo and Sam were both thrilled to take part in laying a spirit to rest, and they worked with Cornelia to create costumes from old clothing left around the house.

Sam was the obvious choice to play our Mollie, and was dressed up in a frock and wig and given a broom, with which he chased those we called on until they gave us the customary coin or sweetmeat. Many of them offered cakes and puddings for the children, and as my energy flagged halfway through the evening, I wondered if they’d sleep at all after the excitement and sweets, or if we’d need to employ some strategy of stealth in order to set the presents out without them knowing.

Jo played the waggoner, driving us on with cheerful shouts and bursts of off-key song. My own singing was little better, and Simon didn’t join in at all, leaving Sam the most effective caroler of our band.

I was cast as the jockey, and made playful attempts to catch Simon and jump on his back. Simon was shrouded beneath the sackcloth and carrying the pole, the cloth head swaying this way and that as we cavorted through the sitting rooms of our friends. He was our hooden horse, which was sensible, as he was the one accompanying the ghost’s spirit to its final rest, but I suspected he was also grateful to be hidden away out of sight beneath the cloth, and not wearing a more ridiculous costume.

Jo and I between us kept Simon from knocking into anything, though Jo occasionally lunged away to keep Sam from sweeping anything valuable to the floor in his enthusiasm. The horse’s head had a clever mechanism for the jaw, which opened and closed as Simon pulled on a string, and thus we could ‘feed’ the horse as well, which Sam and Jo took great delight in doing. They were joined in this by the few children we encountered on our way, who seemed to take their cues from Sam to act out the pantomime.

It was an evening full of merriment, and we burst through the door of 166 Fetter Lane in a tumble, inspired to sing one last chorus of song for Miss Kay and Cornelia, who clapped both hands over her mouth in surprise at our return. We soon dissolved into laughter and chaos, for Cornelia had set up the cobweb party in our absence, and all around us were lines of string, criss-crossing this way and that throughout the house.

Simon cursed, snagged on at least a dozen strings as he’d been under the sackcloth and unable to see, and I chided him to be still, bent double with laughter as I did my best to untangle him. Cornelia kept giving us reproachful looks as we fouled her strings, which only increased my mirth.

I could feel the spirit, its presence growing steadily now that the ritual was coming to a close and its release was near. Nick and Judith had been correct—it had a merry disposition, full of good-natured tricks and teasing, brimming over with a zeal for life that must have made Mr Keighley very good company.

Simon had emerged from beneath the sackcloth and stood tall, his barrel chest heaving for breath. His hair was badly tousled, his skin glistening with sweat from prancing about beneath a shroud all evening, and I was suddenly struck with how well he played the part of a stallion, proud and well-formed, his head up and nostrils flared.

I began to suspect that I was not the only one who thought so, or rather that there was an outside influence on each of us, because Simon tossed his head when he saw me gazing at him, and then looked surprised that he’d done so, brow furrowing.

Mr Keighley, it would seem, shared an appreciation of the male form, and he was in high spirits. A lust for life indeed, I thought—and perhaps also for muscular men whose bodies were accustomed to physical labor.

“Time for bed,” Jo announced suddenly, loud enough that I was startled away from my staring. “Come on, Sam.”

Miss Kay had already drifted back up the stairs to her study, and Cornelia was gone as well, off to collect balls of string so she could salvage her cobwebs. Sam dragged his heels, reluctant to end the evening, but Jo had him by the arm and wasn’t yielding.

“Jo,” I managed through a dry throat, “have you seen something?”

Jo cast a look at me which spoke volumes. “Seen nothing,” they answered, still hauling Sam along toward the stairs. “Seen the look in both your eyes, is all.”

My face flamed crimson, but Sam didn’t appear to have heard, or perhaps assumed that we needed to go about the serious grown-up business of laying a ghost to rest and didn’t want him underfoot. He’d stopped protesting by the time they reached the staircase, rushing up the steps in a flurry of ill-fitting skirts, and nearly tripping over the hem of his frock as he bawled out another caroling chorus.

Simon and I were left staring at one another, both breathing hard now, the pressure in my chest a physical weight now, urging me on.

“Robert,” Simon began, his voice hoarse, and the building storm broke over me, sudden and desperate.

“Yes,” I told him, already moving. “God, Simon, yes.”

We snared ourselves in strings another half-dozen times on the stairs, and stumbled into our bedroom with a clumsy lack of grace, urgency sweeping away our coordination. I fell onto the rug on all fours, stripping off my clothing and positioning myself as was our habit, my entire body tense and impatient.

Simon was on me in the next moment, strong arms bracketing me and the heat of him pressed along my back so that I shivered from the contrast. I bucked against him, and his hips pressed forward against my flank, leaving no doubt he was in the same condition as I.

Simon was quick with the oil, his thick fingers warm inside me. He took my hips in his hands and pulled me back against him, and I spread my knees wider for him to settle between them. I forced myself to relax in anticipation of breaching, but though one of Simon’s large hands cupped warmly around my flank, he made no move to take me. I pushed back toward him, confused; he gripped me more tightly in reflex, but still waited.

“Simon,” I gritted out at last, need pricking nerves under my skin. “For God’s sake, what is it?”

That he might be reluctant to submit to the sportive whims of a ghost crossed my mind, but that had never stopped us before. His arms went around my waist to pull me against him and I shuddered, but then he spoke, low and reluctant.

“I don’t think this will work. Usually...it's the jockey that mounts the horse.”

My first reaction was an objection, but then I realized that I felt it too, the restless desire to claim Simon. The pressure on him must have been greater, and after a moment, hanging my head and panting, I twisted around to look at Simon.

“I didn’t think you…”

I didn’t really need to finish that; he understood. He looked uncomfortable again, but there was no trace of it in his voice. “I’ve never tried. I’ve always been...with partners…”

I could read between the lines of what he was telling me; I’d often guessed as much. Simon would have been the older, wealthier, and more muscular partner; the dominant personality, expected to take the leading role. It was how such things were often decided, when the acts themselves were frequently quick and covert.

“I have,” I said, in case he found it reassuring, and set my hands on his hips. “You’re not my usual type, you know.”

He looked startled at that, his eyes going wide. I wondered if he’d imagined me always with other men like him, or if he’d never imagined me with anyone else at all. I felt self-conscious now, wondering if he’d ask, and whether I’d tell him about the men in bathhouses and back alleys, the telegraph boys and furtive couplings in men’s clubs.

“I’d thought…” he began, and I laughed, thinking of how we’d met.

“Our first two times, you were possessed by ghosts,” I reminded him. “It rather set the tone.”

“First and third,” he corrected, warming me with the memory of our time together in my ancestral home. “The second time was you and I alone.”

He was right, but it had been much the same as the others; Simon’s first move had been to pin my wrists with rough hands and strong arms, and he’d moved me where he liked, taken his pleasure of me in a way that had set me afire, but had little to do with my direction.

Since then, we hadn’t deviated often from the acts, merely adjusted the intensity of the experience. I curved my hand over Simon’s flank and told him, “I’m quite flexible.”

We turned about, Simon settling awkwardly on hands and knees, nervous under my gentling hands. We were cast back into our roles almost at once, the high-strung stallion and careful rider, just as Simon had guessed was the ghost’s intent. I took my time with him, with fingers and oil, and occasionally a kiss left on his flushed skin.

“I never take this much care with you,” Simon said eventually, shifting his weight with impatience.

I laughed, wiggling my finger, and told him, “I’ve had more practice.” He was still improbably tense, even after the minutes of preparation, and the thought of trying to take him seemed possible only in the distant future, which went against the wild desire for each other we were caught up in. I was increasingly desperate to mount him, but his body was rigidly clenched against me, and I didn’t know how much time we might have before the ghost grew impatient and tried to seize more control.

“Turn over,” I ordered, dipping my fingers in oil again and making quick work of the necessities, picking up where Simon had left off earlier. When Simon had rolled onto his back, I moved astride him, straddling his hips and taking his prick in my hand.

“There’s more than one way to ride,” I told Simon, and lowered myself slowly down.

I was no accomplished horseman, but I was more familiar with certain acts, and I knew the instinctive rise and fall of joining with a lover. He was tentative at first, letting me take the lead, and I was grateful for it. My part was still that of the jockey, handling Simon with sure, capable touches, setting our pace with the squeeze of my thighs.

Simon bucked once beneath me and we were off, Simon’s head thrown back and my throat open on hoarse cries, his nostrils flared as I rode him to the peak of my own pleasure. I could feel the presence in the room with us, the freedom and abandon as we surged against one another, the fierce joy of tasting this exquisite moment one last time.

I could rarely tell when Simon laid a ghost to rest, or the precise moment the spirit passed out of the world. This time I thought I could feel it, like a soap bubble rising in my chest until it popped and was gone, leaving me spent and shuddering in Simon’s strong arms.

“One last ride,” I murmured when I'd come down from it, and laughed quietly.

Simon stroked my back as we caught our breaths, and when I turned my head to pillow it on his chest, he said softly, “My resolution this year will be never to take you and your gifts for granted.”

“Have you ever? I can’t think of a time.” I raised my head to kiss his mouth, and then we moved apart, stretching out trembling limbs. I settled again curled against his side, with his arm once more around my shoulders, and his lips against my hair.

I wondered if anyone else might be wandering the house still, and whether Cornelia had left anything out in the kitchen. I’d worked up an appetite, and we still had some time to wait until we could set out the gifts without the risk of being caught at it.

“A good Christmas?” I asked Simon, resting my hand on his thigh.

He set his own atop it and squeezed, a rare chuckle rumbling in his chest. “A very merry one indeed.”


End file.
